Linux on a stick is Linux installed to a
USB flash drive instead of to a hard disk drive.
USB 3.0, which is
ten times the speed of USB 2.0, makes Linux on a
stick fast

Linux on a stick lets
you run your Linux
OS and software on any, up-to-date PC that can
run Linux -- anywhere,
anytime -- regardless of which operating system
is installed on the
PC. . . .

. . . As with “live
Linux”,
Linux on a stick, does not have to be installed
on a hard drive. One
can run Linux on a stick without ever using the
hard drive. . . .

. . . You can think of
your Linux on a
stick as a portable Linux computer on a USB
stick-- and at a cost of
only whatever you paid for the USB flash drive .
. .

We installed Fedora 20
and PCLinuxOS
2014.05 on 32 GB Kingston, Data Traveler 100,
USB 3.0 flash drives.
They worked well. And just as fast and just as
comfortable as running
them from hard drives. And much more comfortable
than running them
from CD/DVD drives.

High endurance flash
drives such as the
Kingston DataTraveler Workspace make Linux on a
stick better than
ever.

USB 3.0 matures “live
Linux” into a desirable,
Linux-installation paradigm! That's because USB 3.0 is
ten times the speed of USB 2.0. Moreover, the prices
of standard, 8 GB to 32 GB, USB 3 flash
drives are less than a buck a gigabyte. That makes “live
Linux” on a USB flash drive very
affordable – and very fast.

Traditionally, “live
Linux” is a Linux distribution
installed on a bootable CD/DVD rather than a hard
drive. However, many Linux distros also can be
installed to a USB flash drive (a stick).

We are not so sure that
installing Linux to a stick is “live” Linux in the traditional
sense. That's because a USB flash drive looks similar
to a hard drive to a computer. And it behaves
similar to a hard drive also. So, we will refer to
Linux installed on a USB flash drive as “Linux
on a stick”.

“USB
3.0 (5 Gbps) is theoretically 10 times faster than
USB 2.0 (480 Mbps). You can expect three-fold to
ten-fold increase (sic)
in performance with the current generation of USB
3.0 devices over USB 2.0 sticks.
However, your mileage varies,
depending on the type of device” and the host.
USB
3.0
Comparison

Today many, if not most,
Linux distros offer a “live “Linux version. And most, if
not all, Linux distros can be set up on a USB flash
drive. However, successfully getting a
Linux distro installed on a stick can be tricky. Be particularly
careful when installing Linux to a stick that you have
the USB drive selected during the partitioning
process. Otherwise you might delete the OS or data
from the hard drive on your computer.

So far, we have managed
successfully to install two Linux distros on sticks – PCLinuxOS and Fedora. We
did this by downloading the “live Linux” ISOs and burning them to
CD/DVDs. Then while running the “live Linux” we used the included “install”
options to install them to sticks -- rather than to
the hard drive.

This article is being
written using LibreOffice Writer on an HP Pavilion
laptop. The Linux distro running is Fedora 20
installed on a 32
GB Kingston, Data Traveler 100, USB
3.0
flash drive. It's just as fast and just as
comfortable as running it from a hard drive. And much
more comfortable than running it from a CD/DVD drive.
The
HP Pavilion 17-e146us Notebook PC has two,
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports. Moreover, running Linux on a
stick leaves the internal hard driv free for
other use.

Kingston’s
DataTraveler
Workspace would be a better choice than the Data
Traveler 100. That's because of write endurance issues. Please see David Leong's
notes, below.

To get the 10X speed, the
USB 3.0 stick has to be plugged into a computer with
a USB 3.0 port. If the USB port is just a
USB 2.0 port, only USB 2.0 speeds will be obtained.

Note:
the two USB 3.0 ports on the HP Pavilion are too close
together – thus only one USB 3.0 port can be used at a time
if two USB 3.0 sticks are being
used. That's because the USB 3.0 sticks we
have are wider than USB
2.0 sticks. But the HP Pavilion USB ports are spaced
for USB 2 stick's, not for USB 3.0 sticks. The
computer designer/engineer responsible for that
screw-up ought to be fired!

Kingston's David Leong notes:

It’s not the technology
that makes the USB 3.0 stick wider.
It’s just the way the drive is made from a design sense.
There are many styles of USB drives: cap, capless, slider,
and swivel to name a few. Kingston makes an assorted
selection to appeal to consumers of all types.

Advantages of Linux On
a USB 3.0 Stick.

As with “live Linux”, Linux on a stick, does
not have to be installed on
a hard drive. One can run Linux on a stick without ever using the
hard drive.

Moreover, with Linux on a
stick, you can save your data, bookmarks, and
configuration files to the USB flash drive while using
Linux -- without ever using the internal
hard drive(s) on the computer. If you want to save the
data, bookmarks, and configuration files when using a
DVD/CD-based “live Linux”, you have to export them to
a hard drive or a USB drive. Otherwise, they vanish
when you reboot.

If you leave a partition of
the USB flash drive in its original format, the MS
DOS/Windows FAT format, you can access the USB flash
drive when you are booted into a Microsoft DOS
or Windows OS. Doing that makes it easy to
let DOS, Windows, and Linux share data files.

Linux on a stick lets you
run your Linux OS and software on any, up-to-date PC that
can run Linux -- anywhere, anytime --
regardless of which operating system is installed on
the PC. However, the PC you use has to be
able to boot from the USB drive.

Often,
that requires configuring the BIOS so that the
PC can boot from the USB port. And
it requires the PC to look for a bootable USB
stick before it tries to boot from the hard drive. Moreover, you have to
be able to run Linux on that computer. For more about
BIOS and UEFI issues see Chapter
5 in Upgrading
and Repairing PCs, 21st
Edition,By Scott
Mueller, Que, ISBN-10: 0-7897-5000-7. For
more about the universal serial bus (USB),
see Chapter 14, ibid.

You can think of your Linux
on a stick as a portable Linux computer on a USB stick--
and at a cost of only whatever you
paid for the USB flash drive.

For example, let's say you
have a computer at home and a computer that you use at
the office or at school. You are smart enough and wise
enough to run Linux on your home computer, However, the
system administrator or IT manager at work or at
school is not smart enough or wise enough to run Linux
on the office or school computers. So, the fool runs
Microsoft Windows on those computers.

When you are at school or at
work, just slip the USB flash drive into the computer
you use there. Then reboot the computer, and you can
be running your personalized, live-Linux
system on the office or school PC.

You also will have your MP3s
to listen to. You will have all your MP3s, bookmarks,
games, and so forth from your home
computer on your work or school computer -- and all
the great free software that runs on the Linux
operating system too. Moreover, when you take your USB
flash drive out and reboot the computer, none of your
data, files, music, bookmarks, browser history, email,
and so forth will be on that office or
school computer.

Flash Drive Endurance

A drawback to running Linux
on a flash drive is limited
write-endurance of flash drives.
Over time (number of writes), flash drives wear out.
However, it takes lots of writes to wear out a flash
drive.

To whatever extent
flash-drive write-endurance is a factor, the
write-load is in caching and swapping. While
caching and swapping, the system makes many writes to
the the disk buffers, disc cache, and swap file.
(However, if there is ample RAM, there typically
will not be much swapping, if any.)

Kingston's David Leong
notes:

Endurance
varies, but, Kingston's, standard, consumer, USB drives
typically use NAND (Negated
AND or NOT AND gate)
Flash that is designed for basic file transfer. The
NAND is not designed to run an OS.

The
controller in the standard USB drive is designed to handle
sequential reads and writes. OSes require lots
of random writes. Even though these files might
be small, the controller isn't designed to handle
the workload. It is expected that a standard,
USB drive running Linux will fail much sooner than
normal.

The
lifespan of the USB drive is determined by the
usage. This is why Kingston’s Data Traveler Workspace and some other
solid-state drives use higher-endurance NAND. Moreover,
the Workspace
controller is designed to
handle the random read/writes; thus,
marrying higher endurance NAND to a
controller that handles random reads and writes. And that
increases flash drive lifespan when running an OS.

Kingston DataTraveler
Workspace 32 GB USB flash drives are available for around
$3/GB.

I am using the Fedora Linux
distribution on a stick on the HP Pavilion being
used to write this article. And am using
PCLinuxOS on an HP 2000 where I am running Linux on a
stick also. Both of these distros set
up disk buffers and disk caches. The default
installations also set up swap partitions. When Linux
is installed on a USB stick, the disk buffer, disk
cache, and swap file are set up on the USB stick by
default.

Some people recommend NOT
setting up a swap file on a USB flash drive – because of the
write-endurance issue. However, this computer has
a 6 GB RAM. Thus the swap file is hardly ever, if
ever, used. But, it is here if ever needed. Likewise
for the HP 2000, which has a 3 GB RAM.

Moreover, with the generous
6 GB RAM, there is lots of room in physical memory for
disk-buffering and for disk-caching. If the RAM is small,
then the operating system will cut down on the size of
the disk buffers and the disk cache.

It's always a good idea to
back up your data. Flash-drive write-endurance
limitations make that especially true when running
Linux on a stick.

Installing a Linux distro to
a USB flash drive can be tricky. In part it depends on
one's computer skills. In part it depends on the
computer. And in part it depends on the Linux distro.
The nice thing is that you can download the Linux
distro at no charge. Thus, you get a free home trial
at no cost to you. Try it! :-)